Supporting THE teaching of action research (STAR)

An Action Research Community

ACTION RESEARCH NETWORK OF THE AMERICAS

WELCOME TO OUR ACTION RESEARCH COMMUNITY (ARC)

The STAR-Community of ARNA provides support for the teaching and learning of action research. We work together to share our ideas, to improve our teaching practice, and we invite you to join us and share and learn from the STAR community.

This initial development of the website was the first phase. Beginning with a small group and using a Learning Circle Approach, we met monthly from Oct 2017-May 2018. Each of us led the group around a project idea and the development of the site resources around that topic. The goal of the community is to collectively create the first draft of ideas, suggestions, and resources to support the teaching of action research.

In our current second phase, we invite the larger ARNA community to join us in expanding the site and discussing ideas, activities, projects and resources. To do this we have:

  1. Made the STAR site available in English and Spanish (use the menu to switch language)
  2. Published our first edition of the STAR Newsletter May 2019 in English and Spanish.
  3. Created Action Research Teaching Blog which accepts contribution in either Spanish or English

In the future we will schedule live STAR Conversations on issues related to teaching action research. Thanks to all that joined us at the ARNA conference in San Diego and we are looking forward to meeting you online and at the next ARNA conference in Montreal. If you have ideas or professional needs as a teacher of action research, please come and share your ideas. We will evolve with all of you.


Kathy Shafer

Margaret Riel

Laura Dino

Laura Dino

Teri Marcos

Donna Azodi

Jennifer Robins

Linda Purrington

Clotilde Lomeli

The people listed here have worked in a Action Research Learning Circle from Sep 2017- June 2018 focused on sharing and creating resources through a process of distributed leadership.

Each member of the learning circle is of a leader of one of the teaching topics listed in the navigation bar, but all the members of the learning circle shared their ideas on these topics either in discussion or writing or both. The topics appear under teaching topics in the navigation menu as well as here. Each of us is exploring ways to have a larger number of people join us and share ideas and you can see this on the pages.


We shared the different ways that action research fits into the curriculum of the university programs. For some it is directly tied to a set of courses. In other cases, the work is informed by courses but students work with a set of advisors to do action action research as a masters or doctoral thesis. Our goal in "timeframes" was to share ideas for how action research fits into the course of study at different universities to help others as they go through reorganizations of their university programs. There is a quick survey for you to complete and you are invited to share your program details.

As a support for those who might be new to teaching action research or who are teaching it in a new area, we are inviting everyone to share their action research syllabi. While the reading material might be dated, the overall structure of courses might provide generative ideas on how to structure new courses. Feel free to add your syllabi with the community.

Resources

We invite you to consider joining a number of networks. We also invite you to use the action research tutorials in your teaching or to make available to students who might use them to help participants in action research who might want to learn more about the process.